Woman charged with embezzlement

Former employee of Anson Excavating & Pipe faces 17 felony counts

Business owner Mike Anson partly faults himself for putting too much faith in one of his employees.

The owner of Anson Excavating & Pipe of Craig says a former employee used company credit cards and checks to purchase nearly $8,000 in goods and services; largely to pay off her increasing financial debt.

Andrea Angus, 33, is being charged with one felony theft charge and 16 felony charges of forgery of checks or commercial instruments in incidents that date to June 19.

Angus' bond is set at $5,000.

Angus told Moffat County Sheriff's Deputy Jeremy Ashton that she had moved to Craig from Grand Junction and started with Anson's company in early June 2004.

Angus told police that she started to pay off personal debt using Anson's credit card and checks, according to a police report.

She said that she was on probation before getting a job with Anson Excavating and that Anson had given her a $1,500 loan to pay back court fees.

"After shortly moving up here Angus says that one thing led to another with financial problems and she started paying for personal debt using Anson's bank and credit card accounts," Ashton wrote in a court document.

"Angus states that she meant to pay back Mike (Anson) and Mardi (Anson), but couldn't do it."

Mike said that Angus worked as the company's bookkeeper. He hires as many as 25 employees during the company's busy summer season.

Anson said his company's accountant prepared a list of fraudulent charges that Angus allegedly had racked up through Nov. 9.

The charges include $1,904 to Credit Acceptance Corp. toward car payments on Angus' 1991 Toyota Previa and her husband's 1993 Ford Explorer, according to court documents.

Other expenses include a $178.72 payment by credit card to Yampa Valley Electric and a night's stay at Steamboat Grand Resort in Steamboat Springs to the tune of $156.09.

According to court documents, Angus said that she was behind in paying her electric bill and needed the money to get the power turned on in her house.

Angus told police she used Anson's credit card to pay for one of a two-night's stay at the Steamboat hotel with her husband on Sept. 16, to celebrate the couple's anniversary.

Angus is scheduled to appear in court Feb. 1.

In another embezzlement case, a former employee of Craig dentist John Ilko, Beverly Jean Doolin Kostur, is facing 23 felony charges for theft and forgery in separate incidents dating to January 2003.

Kostur was expected to appear in court Wednesday, but a plea hearing in the case was postponed. A date for a new hearing was not available Wednesday.